


ne plus ultra

by corellians_only



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Modern AU, Only One Bed, Oral Sex, Smut, academic!obi, but with a twist, massively self indulgent, obi-wan is a gentleman but we knew that, posted on tumblr months ago and forgot to post here, slight age gap, soulmate au if you really squint, vaguely takes place in england
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:13:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27951350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corellians_only/pseuds/corellians_only
Summary: ne plus ultra (n).(1) the highest point capable of being attained(2) the most profound degree of a quality or state----in which you encounter acclaimed scholar obi-wan kenobi after an academic conference, and nothing is quite the same
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Reader, Obi-Wan Kenobi/You
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	1. Chapter 1

the story starts _in medias res,_ as all lives do. the beginning of your life is always in the middle of someone else’s. your death coincides with another’s gallant ebullience, your semi-colon failing to incise upon their life. so the scholars say.

the conference — your first since you passed your dissertation — had made you nervous, and you were glad to be spending an extra night before returning to the real world tomorrow.

your palms are slick, as they always are after too long spent in the company of other academics. the anxiety that swells in you is ballast and the deadweight forces you to slump forward slightly, the visible seam on your the shoulder of your shirt sashaying inwards.

when you smile at the concierge, it is tight, like a formation of soldiers in Napoleon’s day, and does not quite reach your eyes. still decked with traces of freckles and darkened by a summer spent abroad under the sun’s penetrating gazes, your skin fails to comply with demands of minuscule muscles pulling and stretching, commanding it into a thin arc.

but it is no matter — you receive your key and you sign the paperwork and are ascending the winding staircase to the seventh floor. emerald green carpet is your guide, swathing your ascendancy in a sheen of dark-hue velvet. sir gawain chasing after the knight in green armor, a lecture on virtue streaming from the knight’s mouth, materializes on the steps. the galloping thought makes you smile, this time more relaxed. that story is something you know. something you know so well you could almost touch it. indeed you had fingered its pages, during your apprenticeship at the British Library.

hope. the words springs forth, nearly unbidden, from your lips. the word is spoken so softly — merely a breath and a hint of sound disturbing the stairwell’s precious physics. it is a reflex of association. green means hope, the scholars had said, and during the course of your studies you had been disappointed to find that you agreed with them. you did not want to agree with the fashionably smug expert in the field. you wanted to rattle him. shake him to his sacrosanct core, the sanctimonious scum.

_you had never met the man: the mysterious OWK. your advisor had raved about his breakout lecture series that had taken place years ago, when he was a newly minted phd and you were still in undergrad. sipping a cup of cafeteria coffee (they always forgot you preferred tea, all these years later), they had rambled on about the poetry of OWK’s phrasing and his decisiveness in speech and the unparalleled skill of his primary source research. the lectures had been sadly lost, the footage deleted, or archived, they didn’t know which. just that the man had refused to distribute them and speak on the matter further, nearly abandoning academia entirely._

_the beverage was bitter but you laughed lightly. “is this thomas more and his lectures on st. augustine, then? so legendary that no one can find them?”_

_your advisor had inclined their head, congratulating you on your witty reference. “i suppose so,” they had mused, leaning back in their office chair and staring at some point above your head, at the oaken bookshelves with brightly colored book jackets lining the walls. “now, your latest draft—“_

the memory fades as your purpose alters. a simple twist of the key and the door opens. but you remain on the threshold, stuck between two modes, between _here_ and _there._

there is a man in your room, and he is as handsome as sin. he sits in a chair in the corner of the room and one leg is resting on the other’s kneecap at a ninety degree angle. he is wearing glasses, and has short auburn hair that gleams in the dull light of the lamp beside him (although, a few wayward strands obscure his eyes, layering over the frame of his glasses). he is reading. the cover is folded over so you cannot see the title but it is hefty, judging from its position on his thigh. shadows have formed over high cheekbones.

the man removes himself from the task, focusing his gaze on you. you see now that he has bright blue eyes.

“hello there!” his greeting is polite, and amiable, and accented, though not pleasantly so. “can i help you?”

“I’m afraid there seems to be a mix-up!” you say in your ‘adult voice.’ it’s same one you used on your dissertation defense. “it seems we were placed in the same room.”

“ah.” he nods sagely, as though this were to be expected, and unfolds himself from his chair.

you place a hand on your hip — near the phone snug in the back pocket of your jeans — and shrug. “I’m sorry.” the apology is saccharine and tastes like grenadine. “I’ll pop back downstairs and find out what the problem is.”

he urges you to stay, to let him call from here rather you lugging your things all the way down and all the way back up again. “it’s not proper,” he insists, dragging you in and closing the door behind you. in the time that his is so near to you and you feel the way his frown matches the steady grip on your upper arm, something warms in you at his indignation. your hand drifts away from your phone. he retreats to his corner to make the call while you linger just beyond the threshold.

the conversation is hushed and decorated with the raised tones of inquiry. when he hangs up, he sighs.

“they were under the impression that we were a married couple. apparently we booked under a similar last name.” his voice turns down at the edges. he sounds the way his frown had earlier: weary, confused, and a dash of inexplicable certainty.

“but—“ you gesture to the beds — “two beds?”

something of a grimace shadows his face. “all that was available, apparently.”

“oh.” there is a pause. he does not continue. “but they got me a room, right?” if you sound slightly desperate, perhaps it is because you are. you are sweaty. you are nervous. you want to relax. in your own room.

he zooms past your query. “i know you,” he says, and sounds as if he is surprised he knows how to speak.

“i —“ you shake your head — “i don’t think so.”

when you give your name and recognition fails to present itself, he falters and twists to stare through the glass behind him. “i thought…” but he breaks off. in the end he rights himself and tells you of the situation — how there is no vacancy, but he does not mind the sharing a room with you, just for the night, it wouldn’t be a bother.

there is something different about him. maybe it is the way that he emphasized the word can. maybe it is the way he is pushing the hair from his eyes, and removing the glasses from his face. maybe it is the way that, now pausing his actions, the man cants his head and furrows his brow.

air grows thick with the brush strokes of caravaggio: he is in the spotlight, sure and solid and steady, pure against the whirlpools of unknowing realism.

you are on the cusp of stepping into his white light when he offers his name. the first letter of each word drags itself from his mouth and burrows into your ear, until you almost divorce the meaning but for the particulars.

the first instinct that you are aware of is one you cannot name — it is an anger that is sweet, and one that is shielded by sadness, yet fueled by frustration.

there are dozens of others that your heart and mind have already examined, of course, turning them this way and that, inspecting their corners with bloodied hands. but they are rejected, and expelled into the waxy shadows, without your being aware of them. that is the job of the soul: to know before you are even aware.

he senses the shift. perhaps uncertainty has clouded your eyes. obi-wan kenobi, OWK, takes a step back from rising mist and shadow and once more turns to gaze out the window. through the glass there is a gentle village scene, all cobblestones and iron street lamps and hills keeping time on the horizon.

“i — “ you start, but you stop again. you must start, you feel, but you do not know what path to take, and you halt. the time he thinks you consider you are in fact not considering at all. there is only one answer (answers that are wrong are never really answers, after all, just more questions).

“i’ll stay.”

—

Obi-Wan is courteous and deferential and demands that you permit him to treat you this evening as an apology. he departs to give you privacy as you shower, and the flash of shimmering emerald carpet you spy as he exits makes you wonder if you are the Lady Bertalik to his Sir Gawain.

the steam and the water beat down clenched muscles with gentle hands and lingering touches. it is for several minutes that you linger in their warm embrace, but as you wipe away fog from the mirror you cannot help but encounter the sensation that you are alone, and wrongfully so. you cannot feel Obi-Wan’s presence and the air feels stale without him — like there is no current disrupting the atmosphere’s mundane course.

droplets decorate your shoulders and the hollow of your throat. they hold fast even when you pad softly to your belongings for a fresh change of clothes.

The ache in this room is stronger. The walls themselves are mourning his absence. You feel it settle in your gut, a gluttonous mass that lightens when you consider that he should be returning soon. the sky outside the window is orange and gold, flattering the leaves of maple trees in autumn.

the room is pretty, in a simple way: the emerald carpet of hope has been exchanged for a darkened hardwood. Chrome accents gleam in the reflection of the wood, and two beds — one at opposite ends of the wall — are smothered silver-white sheets. a series of Malevich paintings are hung up in a neat grid, as though the dissembling artist would come barging in, screaming of the devil, if the French theories of symmetry were not obeyed.

as you dress and begin to comb your hair, you wonder why you miss someone whom you have just met, and someone you are not disposed to like. can you miss someone you don’t like? he is sporadic and paradisiacal; in motion and steady. his kindness had surprised you, as had his beauty. he was less corrosive than your advisor had made him out to be, less ambitious than the accolades awarded to his name. but he is zealous, hungry, seeking: you could see in the way his eyes bunched around the edges, in the crick of his neck when he sought wisdom from the hills, how he had contorted his body in the chair.

(he is like you, both here and not here, and although you did not yet know, your soul was aware and reflective in wonder)

when your flesh-and-blood sir gawain returns, you muse that you are a poor temptress in an thick-knit ivory sweater that encases your body from neck to wrists. it had been a steal from a second-hand store a few years back, and you had never found the heart to give it up. it was like a childhood book, or a favorite mug — the object, in all its durable materiality, was akin to you.

Your smile pleases him. Obi-Wan says he has found a place for this evening, nothing special, but nice. “We are celebrating after all,” he says, shrugging off a dark woolen coat.

“We are?” you look at him through the reflection of the mirror. blue eyes meet yours.

“Of course!” the phrase suspends itself for a moment, maybe two, as though it is waiting for something to slip in and complete its trinity. but it falls, tumbling back down to terrestrial concerns. “We are celebrating our meeting.”

He is absurd, and you laugh. Obi-Wan’s theory of festivity is not so mercurial as his speech — the declaration sticks to your ribs, pumping blood to your heart and flooding your cheeks with a natural flush.

Obi-Wan continues to examine you. “Might I ask,” he starts, hands stilling in their expedition of finding suitable attire, “where you bought your sweater?”

you respond: it was from a second-hand store, you found it during your apprenticeship, it was the only thing that kept you warm that terribly dreary winter, it was your constant companion.

“does it have a trio of red threads on the left cuff?”

satisfying his quench takes precedence to mystery of his request.

Obi-Wan’s smile engulfs the spirit of the room, and the two of you, and the bedding, and the glass window, too.

“that was my sweater,” he says. “my uncle made it for me, and i gave it to my brother after we adopted him. he wasn’t used to the dampness of English winters, but he didn’t like the itchiness of the knit. he always had an aversion to gritty textures.” he reaches out a hand with a faint smile, like the combined power of his simple offering can cross space and time and memory and return him to the days of him and his uncle and adopted brother.

you do not know what to say. you watch him for several moments. you want to speak, but your mind is blank, thrumming with the idea that it is so very right that part of him has been with part of you all of these years. parts have him has seen you through the long hours of a dreary apprenticeship and discovering the healing properties of English tea and catching tears and wisps of smiles and witnessing ink spill over pages as you churned out dissertation drafts until the argument was smooth and refined.

the idea makes you feel very alive, and alert, and you want to offer him comfort. “would you like to take it back?” one hand tugs at the edge of the cloth, near your waist. “it’s yours anyway.” the pain of parting is lessened by the joy of giving.

he demurs, you coax. eventually it is determined that he will wear the garment for the evening, but only if you wear something of his, too. “that way it’s even,” he says, and you laugh again to hide the dip in your stomach at thought of wearing something of his, of wrapping yourself in his scent, of placing your body in a place his had once inhabited.

you settle on a light gray blazer that you think must compliment his eyes, which sparkle with aquamarine and crystal. it is paired with a turtleneck and when you emerge to show him the completed ensemble, spinning in a circle, he chuckles.

“you look like me,” he says, one hand cupping his chin.

a feeling pulses in your mind but you let it go. you may like him after all, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a pompous academic whose theories had made your life hell.

—

you expect him to take you to a cozy place. somewhere where they serve the local brew and make homemade shepherd’s pie, but he doesn’t.

he takes you a bar that is sleek and modern, with soft yellow lights and paneled ceilings and marble counter-tops. Obi-Wan escorts you to a high table in the corner, a hand on the small of your back. the warmth from his palm spreads through his jacket and your turtleneck and it feels like cinnamon and candlelight. 

later, you will not remember what you ordered to eat, but you will always remember the two cups water that appear on the table.

the glasses have smooth edges and and rounded sides, curving around themselves ad infinitum or perhaps reductio ad absurdum. faint golden orbs hunch against the surface; integers of light cling to any sort of tactical reassurance. even the glass will do.

the cups are hefty, and not just with the font of life. the vessel is weighty, durable. Obi-Wan tells you that they are recycled.

he does not talk about what he does now and how he teaches, and you do not mention your work. you do not need to: what these truths have taught you is in every swallow, every glance, every gentle barb. the two of you do not need shields of citation guidelines to understand one another.

the conversation dances. he pulls you in with a question. you twirl around him, brushing his five o’clock shadow. artifice glistens and then falls away. with every pass and dip and _pas de chat_ resentment and assumption weaken, and your eyes become bigger. he changes the time signature, the style (first it was a waltz, and then a swing step, and now it is easing into something unknown). the fabric of his jacket is smooth, and comfortable, and smells like him — warm and spice and clean. you ease into it like it is your birthright.

you do not see, but Obi-Wan notices, and grins into his water.

he does not see, but you notice, the way he couches into your sweater, and your eyes curl in some form of elation.

“what were they about? the lectures, i mean.” this is the question you have been waiting to ask. here, in the bar, with glass, you are emboldened to let go of one last grudge.

he looks at you, and his gaze stabs you, but then it softens — like the needle from a shot easing into muscle before retreating as swiftly as it came.

“what did your advisor say they were about?” he fiddles with his glass.

“they said…” you close your eyes in recollection. eyelashes flutter against freckles. “they said the lectures were about grief.”

Obi-Wan’s smile is wry, but he does not seem displeased. he is still too relaxed to be angry. how you can read his body language so quickly, you are not sure — maybe it is because he is wearing your sweater. so many things you are unsure of, but he is not one of them. not really.

uncertainty is different with him. he is not an ever-fixéd mark, nor a staid anchor in the waves. but he is resolved, and you can separate him from the rest of the particulars that impede your life. he is not just _krei_ : distinguishing and judging and explanatory and crisis all at once, all at everything.

yes, uncertainty with him is less about judgment and is rather imbued with mystery. it is _krei_ mixed with _mysteriam_ : separating the hidden things from that which is known.

Obi-Wan taps his finger on the glass and the sound returns you to the present. he has caught you wandering, again, wandering the wayward halls of esoteric remembrance.

“they were about grief,” he nods, staring at the transparent material in his hands.. Obi-Wan’s voice is kingly and aromatic, like basil. it lilts and sways around the words he speaks as in a courtly dance, like those Anne Boleyn performed for King Henry.

lifting his gaze to yours again, he adds, “and they were about joy. those lectures were about everything, and nothing.” a hand rises, and rhythmic fingers sweep away invisible cobwebs. “they were,” Obi-Wan concludes, “about life itself. phenomena, as it were.” the hand floats down and rests on the table.

it is perilously close to yours now: mere inches from the edges of your body. you both look down at his hand in a brief moment marked and scratched with silence, and you are alone with your thoughts. his hands are worn, like they have been used — little scars and wrinkles and a slight puffiness that tells you that he spent a lot of time writing today. you like that.

you point to the swelling, at the v of his hand where thumb and palm meet. the tip of your index finger hovers above the spot and your confession must linger too, because it takes several moments for him to drag his eyes upwards to study your face.

“how many ACE wraps did you fray while writing your dissertation?” he asks, and you want to push him for being such a competitive brat.

your hand is still suspended above his.

you tell him your answer, and he cups his fingers around yours in a spasm of revelation. “me too!” his grip tightens. “academia is one son of a bitch.” he catches you in a sideways glance, and when you laugh, he relaxes into a smile.

“I read your dissertation, you know.” the sweater itches against your wrist, where the sleeve of his blazer has ridden up and exposed skin.

“i didn’t.” you take a sip. “but i do know how you feel about scholars such as myself.” another sip. are you biding time? you are not sure. “you feel very strongly about the color green, Dr. Kenobi.”

his grip slackens but he does not release your hand completely. “please. call me ben.”

“no?” your eyebrow arches. “not OWK, either?”

“I don’t use that name with friends.”

“Are we friends?”

his eyes are earnest, open, porous, like blue tulle on ballet costumes. “yes. i dare say we are.”

—

when the two of you stand to leave, there is a still a table that prohibits unity. emptiness subsumes you; he is so near and yet so far; Ben should be next to you. the distance continues, grows, as you exit, and an ache pours forth from your soul, because you now know what you did not know before. you had seen it in the glass, and in the reflected light, and the way you had seen yourself in his eyes when you danced with him without touching his hand.

you halt, he pauses. you take a step forward and Ben watches you. darkness blankets the town’s cobbled streets; the stones gleam dully and swallow the street lamps all into an abyss. except his eyes: Ben’s silken azure eyes are your anchor.

_people don’t make sense but you do._

a few steps more and the two of you are very close. you tilt your head to look at his face. you are there, reflected in his pupils. “maybe i am you.” you mean for it to sound teasing, but your soul knows before you do, and the words are laden with imperial import, like a royal seal.

those gemstone eyes flicker over your face. he has felt it too, he is telling you, but how you know this you cannot say. “no, i do not think so.” letters drip out, leaking in a slow stream. “but i think perhaps we are a part of each other.”

and then you have narrowed down the sum to its composite parts. the glass has shattered and the left hand swims in its sand and calcium carbonate and ash, drifting through a process of becoming. particles glimmer on skin, under nails, brandishing depth and texture and a pantone coloring book of the human heart. 

it is a mutual kiss, one where individualism no longer endures. his hands — swollen, calloused, firm — are grasping your cheeks. your arms are around his waist, winding around sweater and skin and soul. when you close your eyes, you think it will be dark. you are wrong. tenebrism creeps away and shadows vanish, and there is only him, and a resounding tenor of colors.

ben’s lips are soft, and his breath is warm, and it is the kiss for which you feel like you have spent your whole life preparing. he is safe ( _tender_ ) and unexpected ( _his tongue grazes your teeth_ ). he likes it when you grip him harder, the knit no longer coarse against your palms, not when his hand is wandering through your hair in flashes of blue and gold and pearl.

when you pull away, and nuzzle his cheek, Ben smiles — soft and comforting like the garment on his back. maybe this is why glass shatters and cracks around your feet, crunching as you sway slightly in each other’s arms — you have worn his jacket, and he has worn your sweater.

—

it is predawn the next time he kisses you. the two of you are on his bed, near the window. sweaters and blazers have been exchanged for baggy t-shirts and sleep shorts. Ben is facing you, cross-legged on the pale sheets, and he watches you as you take in the metamorphosis of the sky, from black to navy to the merest smidgen of blue and grey on the horizon, skating across the silhouette of the hills.

he watches you as you speak, too, about the way you loved the ocean as a child, and your favorite book is Moby Dick. it was so very ethereal to you, the way that sailors used the stars to navigate. it was like they were communing with the heavens.

Ben thinks that your voice glitters. it is weary with much talk and too little sleep but it shines the way diamonds do when they are stitched onto spanish lace, supported with the strength that is only found in delicacy.

your eyes, he thinks, are more like satin, for the way they gleam and mix their depth and shadows without losing their sheen, glassy in their wonder.

but you notice his regard, and you pause. he cannot see it, but he can feel a blush jogging from your neck to your cheeks.

you stare at each other. and then — he is next to you, and laying you down, and you are learning his labyrinthine ways even as you begin to come undone.

he is coming alive, or waking up—you’re not sure. his ends and beginnings are still a unknown to you: you must fashion yourself a mystic to enter his realm. somehow you suspect he is yours. your alpha and omega, the moral force that has driven you forward to now, to this point, where his forehead is meeting the jut of your jaw as he kisses his way down your neck.

you are hot and cold all at once and when he licks your pulse point, and sucks, you gasp. it is a gentle thing, more like a deep breath than an exclamation. you feel yourself leaning into him, straining for his touch. his auburn hair under your fingertips is soft and slick with his gel and you tug at it in an act of encouragement.

he pulls away. hovering over you, eyes blue and silver in the pale light — twin moons, perhaps — he smirks. “are you trying to tell me something, darling?” he asks lowly, and his voice is dark molasses. it is sticky and sweet and bitter, inching down your body. you want his kisses to follow its tortuous path, staining you with vermillion and black and dying you with pleasure.

he is color. you are cloth.

the durability of your nature returns in a rush marked with grains of steel. “no.” you swallow and the action traces where his lips met your skin just moments earlier. “i rather thought _you_ were trying to communicate with _me._ ” you sound ragged, coy, on the verge of aching.

Ben does not take your bait. “i was.” his breath is hot against your ear, and arresting. he pauses. the molasses continues to drip. “i was just wanted to make sure i had a clear answer.” and he nips your earlobe. you bite your lip in response: the two of you are in sync. 

“yes.” you are fabric, and your voice is terrycloth.

“Yes?” he repeats your fiat. Shards of glass collapse around you as he again meets your gaze.

this must be how the Virgin prayed her Magnificat, you think as his heart errantly beats against his throat. She must have been like he is now, brimming with humble righteousness and bound by understanding. Tenderness cords through you; it tempers your breathing, smoothes the bubbles of molasses. Reaching up to to cup his face, you let your fingers splay over his cheek, resting on stubble and skin. your pinky finger meets the angle of his cheekbone. the image falls into place and the symmetry causes you to smile.

“yes. etiam. ja. sí.” you are about to conclude in greek — ναί — but he halts your litany of assent by placing an offering on your lips. the greek is in the twists of his tongue in your mouth, and so is the hebrew, and the arabic, and all the languages yet to engrave themselves in your memory.

it is like the first time you experienced champagne at your father’s christmas party. one of his students had poured you, then sixteen, a glass and said with a wink, “the monks declared it was the taste of the stars.” you had raised the flute to your lips and drank as you were bid, and when you had swallowed, you knew the world was different now. or perhaps the old world had not changed, you had merely adapted to fickle ways.

your tongue did as it had then, skating across your front teeth onto your upper lips in quick, jabbing motions. unsatiated and incomplete.

he pulls away again and you frown. eyes closed, you tug at his shoulder in a nonverbal ask to _come back._

silence meets your plea and you open your eyes. he is still above you, weight resting on his forearms, and he is smiling. “you are so impatient.” the rebuke is fond and he soothes its burn with a kiss to your cheek. your eyes flutter closed, briefly.

“i am not impatient.” arms cross over your chest and eyes roll. “i am —“ the phrase is paused as he kisses your other cheek. you open your eyes. “i am.” he waits for you, as he always has, but after a few heartbeats he gleans the completeness of your meaning. _existence_ is the watchword of this night, or this dawn: let sartre and his kind be put to rest. 

so the two of you kiss again, and when his arms get tired, you drape your legs over his lap and press yourself into his chest. the last vestiges of moonlight have settled upon you, but it is no thing, not when skin feels what eyes cannot. lips are languid and hands stroll up and down pathways and alleyways and sidewalks. brittle substances of impatience are burned away through the silk of his fingers. you are content to rest in chiaroscuro.

there is another breaking: transparent and fortified compound of ash and sand — let in by the moon and the rising venus — twinkles around your head, his spine. a whispered ask, a tender assent: shirts glide over shoulders and he guides in your descent.

breathing is knowing, feeling is seeing: for here essence and existence bleed into one consummate act of communion.

lips touch your collarbone, your breast. your hands plane over his chest in a crusade of knowledge. he does not begrudge your gasps, now, or the arches your back erects to his honor. ben’s lips, hands, the vehicles of his words to the world, at once analyze and soak in praise.

clothes fall away, skin uncovering skin, manifesting a reality that had resided in your souls far before today. before the bar, the hotel, the sweater, there was always the two of you, striving for eudaemonia.

“this is phenomena,” he whispers against the curve of your hip. ben presses a kiss to the bones that give form to your body politic (the totality of your shattered glass made whole).


	2. Chapter 2

the pounding is what awakens you. him, too: his heart beat is striking repeatedly in chest, thrumming against your back. it’s near your shoulder and you feel like your own heart struggles to pierce skin and bone and join his. and yet these earthly things keep time together, orchestrating your movements. a tattooed arm stretches above his head and the other hand — the one that feels less like cinnamon and more like ginger, now — closes in around your bare waist and pulls you flush to his chest.

“Good morning, _an tè ghaolach agam_.” the feeling of molasses from the previous night — this morning, really — returns. slightly bitter with ruffled sleep, his voice nevertheless seeps into your skin. its warmth is accompanied by a brush of his lips to the tip of you ear: warm, and familiar. so you turn your head to press a kiss to the soft hairs on his chest and mumble against his skin.

“what does that mean?” you look up at him with wide eyes, unguarded and rimmed red with disclosed emotions.

obi-wan smiles against your hair, but you do not see it, because you are still tucked into his chest. “ _an tè ghaolach agam_.” you hear the sheets swim under him as he shifts slightly. “what do you think?”

he is doing it again, twisting your questions back on yourself. “i think it’s —“ you pause for a yawn, and your words shift inside your mouth. “it sounds old.”

a kiss to your bare shoulder, locks of hair brushing skin. but the pounding erupts again, and you realize that it was not merely his heart that roused you from sleep.

“housekeeping!”

“oh shit.” the exclamation (yours) marks the space with flaring vehemence and you sit up in a rush. “uh, later, please!” the door handle begins to twist, like the sheets pooling around your middle, leaving your entire upper body exposed.

“no, no, later, later!” you repeat, voice rising to match your urgency. finally the door slams shut.

obi-wan is watching you, his back to the window, muddled light poking through clouds and curtains and glass.

“are you always so theatrical?”

something about him, about bare-ness, makes you shy and aware. aware that he is watching you. aware that he made love to you like he knew you. aware of how reckless you have been these past hours, drowning in clarity you do not believe truly exists.

pewter words roll listlessly from your lips. “i - i’m sorry. i rather suppose i am.”

obi-wan smiles at your adoption of his culture’s syntax, but you miss it. your spine still greets his eyes. “theater is the acting out of living. i see no reason to apologize for such a thing.” he emphasizes his self here, in an exercise of agency. you feel safe.

he scoots forward and dots kisses along your shoulder, the back of your neck. hot lips against cool skin and you shiver at the contrast. “can you please hand me my phone, _m'fheudail_?”

you do, because the strangeness of his tongue wraps you in soft linen and diamond encrusted crystal. he makes a call as you pull on your shirt and wipe sleep away, even though the clock on your own device says that it has been less than five hours since you rested in a tangle of experience and knowledge.

obi-wan joins you in the bathroom mere minutes later, brushing his teeth as you wrest your hair into braids.

he speaks when he is done. “the room is ours for another night.” a pause: he meets your gaze in the mirror. there is something of disquietude in those tempestuous eyes, their color matches the elements of nature for which they were named. “if, of course, that’s agreeable to you. i don’t mean to assume, or impose, or if you can take time from work, or—“

ben is nervous, you realize, nervous and wound in his jaw and his eyes and loose in expression. and just like before, when you should say no you in fact say yes, because that is the realest answer. so many ways to say no and only one way to say yes: your soul knows but your mind does not; intellect cannot comprehend what is does not see.

he stills when you say so. and he smiles, that brilliant smile he flashed so often last night over water cups of recycled glass and uneven streets and the pressure of lamplight.

and he reaches over, and pauses your hand, where it is tying off the twist, and kisses the inside of your palm: a feathery touch, like when galileo’s experiment met solid earth. it is unfair that he looks so pretty in the industrial light of a hotel bathroom. and yet perhaps your eyes are clouded over with the rain from his heat and you cannot see.

after all, are you not blind when you close your eyes? are you not numb as his tongue caresses your mouth? are you not deaf when his whine fills your ears as you bite his lip? is the salt of his skin not overpowering when you kiss down his chest? is the scent of him, all smoke and sweater and spice, not enough to overwhelm you?

in short, is he not so alive, so heart wrenching alive, here, in the bathroom, under sterile lights, so alive as to make you dead?

but these are things that your soul knows, and the rest of you does not. the rest of you knows his tongue scraping along your teeth and the coolness of the counter beneath you when he lifts you up and how your ankles nestle around the curve of his hips. the rest of you knows how it feels when the rest of him receives the promise that start to etch on his heart (here & now & right).

*****

he wakes you a few hours later. sunlight — lucid and diaphanous — forms constellations in his hair when you blink up at him, sheets skating over skin.

a callused thumb strokes the slant of your cheekbones, and Ben kisses the trail it blazes. He only stops when he reaches your scalp, at which time he pauses and closes his eyes. It’s just for a moment, his breathing in, but the intimacy is what makes your eyes widen.

but the grace skitters away when your eyes meet. perhaps it is fearful of the brightness in their darkness; frightened by the threat he poses to its carefully constructed order.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” he murmurs, one corner of his mouth climbing upwards, clearly amused at your ability to sleep at all hours of the day.

and just for that you turn your face away from his touch and furrow into the pillow in an arcing, dramatic movement. “no!”

“no?” Ben repeats the question. His manner reminds you of the way your sister coaxes small children at work: he strokes your hair and speaks slowly, like he is in no hurry. like the two of you are discussing nothing of great importance. like the two of you have been doing this eons. “aren’t you hungry, dearest?”

you shake your head. “no.” the rebuttal is muffled by the voluminous pillows, but he still catches it and shakes his head (you miss this, but there are lifetimes more to experience it for the first time).

“no?” he repeats again, like he had last night, or was it this morning? you’re still not sure. “I thought you would have worked up an appetite.” Ben leans down again, this time nipping gently at the shell of your ear. “Or did I not work you hard enough?”

a melange of sensory output slaughters you in seconds, minutes, heartbeats. what is time? the medievals thought of time in two dimensions, or rather, two sewn into one. the earthly is but the expression and imitation of the heavenly. why do you think the northerners revolted when henry tried to take away their catholicism? the world was shifting and they could no longer keep pace with its rhythm and meter.

“well. maybe a little,” you concede, one eye returning to the realm of the temporal.

“that’s my girl,” Ben breathes, and you devour the praise like his words are the single most important occurrence in your life.

(they are. your soul is already aware of this).

In his normal voice, he asks you how much time you need to get ready, nodding and kissing your temple before he stands up. “I’ll wait downstairs while you get ready. Dress warm; it’s chilly.”

There is a parting look and a click of the door as he leaves, and then you are left alone even as he is burrowing into your very self with sewing needles of proof and languid utterances.

Ben takes you, his _an tè ghaolach agam,_ to tea. This time, it is a mom-and-pop shop, the sort of which you had expected last night. He’s been going here since he was your age, when he first attended this conference. “The staff turns over frequently, but there are two or three who are here long enough to know me from year to year,” he says proudly. He likes to be known.

The waitstaff share coy smiles with each other as you enter, and faint whispers colored with navy disappointment when Ben escorts you to a bistro table near the window.

He orders for you — because he knows the secret menu, Ben says — and a short time later a feast of delicacies arrives. There are scones and jam and clotted cream beside small sandwiches. He’s so very proper when he pours the tea and stirs in his milk — “what do you mean you drink your tea without milk?” Ben asks, eyes scandalized, and insists on showing the correct method to butter a scone — that it makes you giggle.

He grins when you do, running a hand through shaggy, tousled hair that drapes over his forehead. Ben doesn’t often push it back, but you don’t mind. He’s lighter like this: in a thin white sweater and navy bomber jacket with cuffed jeans that show his tattoo. This is Ben, not his sternly professional suit and tie in that faculty profile photo you found online when you searched for his email address years earlier. There are a few more lines around his eyes now, but you don’t notice. not really. not when there is so much of him in front of you, grasping your hand across the table the same way he holds your heart to his.

*****

You worry that you will be the one to cry when you part the following morning, two trains on two platform in opposite directions. It is him, though, who first sheds watery hope. You see tears hovering on his eyelashes when you touch your forehead to his, resisting each attempt to be swept aside.

“Hey, Ben. It’s okay.” Your hand rubs up and down his arm, running against the fabric of his trench coat. It feels weird to call him Ben, now; it’s at odds with his crisp dress shirt and slicked back hair and satchel dangling from his shoulder.

“I’m taking the train up to you next week,” you soothe, ignoring the curled calls for boarding and announcements of delays and exhortations to watch your belongings. “I’ll even make you tea.”

“I’m not sure I trust you to make tea,” Ben returns, smiling softly despite himself.

“Well I’ll just have to practice, won’t I?” He likes the way you piece your words together; he likes the the way you feel against him when you press two things into a singular expression.

He doesn’t respond, but presses his lips to yours instead: he kisses you like the sunset, dark purples and pale blues and rose-petal pink, holding onto the last heat of day. “Call me when you get home?” he mumbles against your mouth, chilled hands on the apples of your cheeks.

Somehow you know that your city flat will no longer feel like home. Not without his blazer draped over the second-hand chair, not without his swollen hands wrapping yours in ACE bandages, not without your body dancing with his in the discourse of daily life.

But you smile and nod, and unwind your fingers from his biceps, and listen to one last endearment fall from his lips before turning around and boarding your train.

(you cry yourself to sleep that night, awash with melancholic glory).

*****

and so it goes: you visit him next weekend, and you do make him tea. In his professor voice, he informs you that it is merely passable. He would not pass you on a practical exam, he starts to say, but then Ben peeks through the cracks and he’s laughing, pulling you into his lap.

and so it goes: he visits you the weekend after next, and you take him to your favorite city parks, and teach him how to make coffee.

and so it goes, in a gentle, swaying pattern, a deft weaving of your life with his, week after week. He forgets a hoodie at your place. You sleep in it, and send him a photo. he texts you a traditional Scots poem in persons . You forget your travel mug at his, and Ben texts you a picture of it resting secure on his exposed shelves. You send him a passage on the importance of material culture from your new research.

and so it goes until there is harsh interruption: one, two, three weekends in which you do not see him because he needs the time to train.

He calls you one evening as you walk home from work, during after this third weekend — the fourth week since you last interwove your threads with his — and says he has something to ask you. A gentleman, he is, stating his intent always. So why do you always feel off-center with him, off-center and safe at once? It doesn’t make sense.

And like he can tell (is he wearing your sweater?) he draws you back to him now, pencilling you closer with quick dashes of vision. “Would you do me the honor of accompanying me a dressage competition next weekend?”

He can’t see your face, which is probably a good thing, because it contorts upon itself, like the busy London streets. “I’d love to Ben, but what’s — what’s a dressage competition?” The French word feels twisted on your tongue despite your acquaintance with the language.

“Oh, darling!” he exclaims, and laughs. the sound is not so clear through your shitty drugstore headphones, but you’ll take anything to relieve the constant ache in your chest, constricting your ribcage. “It’s a— it’s a horse show of sorts. The horses are lead through a series of exercises and are judged based on how well they do.”

“Oh.” you bite your lip and sidestep a harassed person in a suit. “It sounds lovely, Ben.”

“Really?” He drags out his syllables and it makes him sound breathless. “Oh thank you, _mo ghràdh._ I’m so relieved.”

Your amusement is clear for him to hear. “Why on earth were you nervous? I’m just excited to see you.” It’s been a fucking month, is what you don’t say, because he knows this as well as you do.

“Well that’s the thing, darling, I suppose. I’m competing you see.” His words are so much like him, so variable and riddled with fits and starts, you realize. “That’s what I’ve been doing the past weekends. I’ve, uh, been training.”

Maybe you should be angry. But he is so vulnerable at this moment, and you want to see him so badly, that you settle for something softer. “I’d love to be there. Send me the time so I can book the right train, okay?”

(He does, later. And a ten-page explanation of the history of dressage, and a dress code, and a code of conduct. It’s like a goddamn research proposal, replete with citations and footnotes and diagrams. You laugh, but it hurts this time, because it’s so very him — so professorial and thorough and absurd — that your ribs contract and you have to make a cup of tea to ease the tension.)

*****

He’s already there when you arrive at the arena. After a rather vague text exchange that included lots of “in the barn?” “which one?”s, you find him in a waiting pen with the horses, chatting with a rather petite woman with large brown eyes.

Ben halts mid-sentence when he sees you, breaking out into a grin and calling out your name. The woman turns her head, too, and you watch them share a words as you approach. He looks nice, you think, noting his slicked back hair and the breadth of his shoulders that you can appreciate from just his profile.

But then —- but then — but then he turns. And you see him for the first time. And you do not know how you do not faint on the spot.

The collared white shirt — blinding in its purity — hides his neck but somehow elongates it at the same time, the tie dipping into a midnight blue jacket — no, shadbelly, you correct yourself. The weighty fabric is expertly tailored, silver double-breasted buttons stretching the material over his chest. A cream colored vest peeks out from underneath, exposed where the front of the shadbelly stops at his navel. Did he always have such a sharp shoulder to waist ratio? Or is it simply the weeks of distance that made you forget? The cream matches the accent on his upturned collar, and it makes his eyes somehow more piercing and softer at the same time while he watches you watch him.

And the pants. Oh god, the pants. The jodhpurs are a glaring white, like his shirt, and are tighter than should be legal. Every curve, every muscle of his legs — how had you never noticed how muscular he was? — was exposed, clinging to him like a second skin. Literally. It was tight everywhere. Not to mention the dark brown boots, the shade a of a properly crafted Americano, encasing his calves all the way to his knees.

You can’t breathe, your tongue is like sandpaper in your mouth, are you even moving anymore? And when you finally drag your eyes to his, trying oh so very hard to not linger in one place in particular, you can tell that he knows. Ben’s seen the immediate flush and noticed how your lips parted to let your tongue skate across them in an unconscious movement. He’s seen your eyes slide across his body. He sees you swallow hard as you approach, and inhale like you’re swaying, like you’re unsteady on feet.

“Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” he says in a low voice, tucking his helmet under his arm. “I’m glad you’re here.” Ben smiles again, kissing your cheek in a gentle greeting.

There are introductions and handshakes, and you learn that the woman is Padmé and his silver horse is named Earrach.

“It means spring!” he explains, pouting at your blank expression. “I can’t believe you. I thought I had taught you enough Scots for that.”

“Isn’t Obi-Wan so extra?” Padmé asks, brown eyes sparkling. 

“Always,” you return. You weaken the blow, though, by reaching up to kiss Ben’s cheek, gripping his arm to do so. He smiles down at you, at soft thing that nevertheless reaches those molten eyes, and you tighten your grip. From the way he winks at you a moment later, he’s felt your reaction and dutifully taken note.

“Listen,” he starts, turning you by the shoulder so you are face to face. “I have to go queue, but you know how to get to the stands, correct?” You nod dumbly, still transfixed. “Good. Meet me here after, okay? And then we can go back to the barn together.” Ben presses another kiss to your hair. “You look lovely, _m’fheudail_.”

He has never looked more beautiful, you think later, watching him salute the judges and run Earrch through the complex routine. They call him Obi-Wan, here, and you can’t helpful think that it suits him. He is beautiful, and he is yours, and the thought chips away at the stone in your chest until there are just scattered pieces of earth in your veins.

*****

it is dusk when you return to his barn. you wander around and pick up various tools while he takes care his horse, glancing over at him every few seconds to admire the way the dark-colored boots hug his calves, elongating his legs, emphasizing the strength of his back. The riding pants hug his thighs, clinging to his lean hips as he moves carelessly, — worn from the day, no doubt.

Copper hair burns in the fading light, and although you can’t quite make them out, you are sure his eyes are sparkling waves of blue. He is altogether too gorgeous for his own good, but you lo— you…you are content to bask in his radiance.

each time he notices you staring he smirks to himself, chuckling while you look away, gaze going to the ceiling or the horse, or anywhere but him. the third time it happens, obi-wan beckons you to him. the bench is clear of its odds and ends, and it seems he surveying the tack on the wall, taking inventory.

when you come close he takes your hand and drags you to him, slowly, your feet dragging against the dirt and hay. He is speaking around the smile that plays on his lips. “what do you think, my dear?” he kisses your hand, like he is indeed your own gallant sir gawain, wooing his lady after gaining honor at the tournament. “shall we go home now?” the attention makes you giggle, and in the rapid onset of shadows you can detect the wrinkles around his eyes.

but then he wraps an arm around your waist, jerking you to his side. you are so close to each other, now. so close that you can feel his hardness when he leans into you; so close that it takes your breath away.

“or are you too distracted, _a chagair_?” his voice is hot, the language of his ancestors fiery and primal. you bite your lip, a small action at the corner of your mouth, but obi-wan sees and continues forward, forcing you back until you bump into the work bench. The contrast is making you dizzy, and he knows it. he has calculated everything down to the moment. you see this, now.

he takes your chin in his hands and tsks. “so distracted she can’t even walk straight.” planting his legs around one of yours, so that his boots brush up against the fabric of your pants. he catches the hitch of your breath when he leans into you and nuzzles his nose against your skin.

you think he is going to kiss you, but he does not. he merely hovers above you, constructing a scenario of fundamental desire and aching catharsis. and so you do what he has accused you of doing before: you tug at him in impatience, eager to set the strategy in motion. 

Obi-Wan smirks. He places his hands on your hips and wedges his thigh in-between your legs, moving silver-slow, ghosting a kiss over your lips when you instinctively clench around him.

you’ve wanted him all day, ever since he donned those knee-high boots the color of a burnt caramel and those white riding pants that showed every curve, every outline, every flex of muscle (and other things), so you pull at him again. It’s insistent and rough so that he stumbles into you, canting his head to the side just in time for his mouth to meeting yours in clash of teeth and tongues and fingertips burning through fabric.

he lifts his lips from yours and starts kissing your jaw, your neck. stifling moans — his? yours? — echo in your ears as you rock against his thigh, breath catching when he flexes beneath you .

a hand — his — raises to rest against the base of your throat. his palm is warm and fingers curl skin, callused against your pulse point, and yet he is gentle, merely keeping you steady as you rock into him.

You become aware of the contrasts — cold & hot, gentle strength — like he way you woke up with him, woke up with him over sweaters and blazers and arguments about tea. It’s a heady realization, one that makes the heat in your center unbearable.

“Fuck, sweetheart,” you hear him gasp when your ragged breathing transforms into a crisp whine. The words slap against your skin, pinching and pulling. Obi-Wan captures you in another kiss, both hands coming to rest at your hips again and pressing into him so ferociously that you keen into his mouth.

Obi-Wan pulls away with a gentle nip to your lip, and the two of you still, lost in the time & measure of silence broken by the staccato of breathing and accent marks of lips painted red. He seems to be considering, but your dazed state, you can’t imagine what. so you reach for him (have you not been doing that all your life, after all?), needing something more tangible than his metaphysics to satisfy your soaking need.

but obi-wan dodges your insistent fingers and lifts you instead, raising your body in a singular motion that belies his urgency.

“lie back for me, _a chagair_ ,” he instructs, already undoing your belt. you obey wordlessly as he makes quick work of your shoes, your pants (but he does pause to fold them neatly and place them on the far end of the table, because obi-wan kenobi will always be a gentleman first and everything else second).

obi-wan leans over you, seeking confirmation, which you provide with a breathless nod. he smiles softly, cerulean eyes burning like kindling to flame, and starts pressing kisses to your thigh. you are vaguely aware of draping your knees over his shoulders. he whispers something against your skin in approval. the sound gets lost in hum of your breathing and his sighs, but you feel it all the same. thank you darling, so good for me, I will give you everything I have.

when he reaches your mound he pauses, warm breath mingling with your slickness in the rapidly cooling air. “please, obi,” you manage to stutter, “i —“

but “please,” was all he needed to hear, the competitive brat, because as soon as the utterance passes through your lips his tongue is tasting you with broad strokes. for several moments there is nothing except him and waves of relief as your ache transforms into a different kind of want, a more immediate one. He is flame, you fire, wild and gasping for air as his tongue expresses everything he cannot show, just as it always does.

“more, obi, please.” you lift up your head, your shoulders to make eye contact with him and pauses.

“more, _m’fheudail_?” the english runs into the scots gaelic like he doesn’t know which language can communicate who he is, now, in this moment. “so demanding. is that what these boots do to you? do they make you greedy?” he sounds curious, exploratory, like he is wondering why his book is not where he left it.

the sight of him, fully dressed in knee high boots and splattered white riding pants and a crisp white shirt: the sight of him between your legs and edging you in scots and english and the purity of his mouth is almost obscene. it would be unholy, perhaps, if not for the fact that he is him and you are you.

“i rather think they do,” obi-wan concludes as you whimper under him, throbbing with need.

“please obi, I’ll be so good.” you are whining now, but you don’t care.

he leans over you, then, pressing his bulge to your center and you moan, lifting your hips to chase more friction.

“what is it you want, darling?” he is back to english now, wiping a strand of hair from your face with a sweep of his thumb. “do you want me to fuck you in these boots?”

the thought — hitherto unconsidered — is enough to make you clench around nothing and you nod.

“i can’t see you, m’fheudail, it’s too dark.” his voice is softer, now, afraid that he has gone too far.

“please. please fuck me with your boots on.” your voice is razor-sharp and fuzzy, coating him while diving into his heart.

you hear his sharp intake of breath and undoing of his pants but you are unprepared for the way it feels when he pushes into you, like you are stretched and full all at once. he has rearranged your legs to wrap around his waist and you pull at him, bringing him closer as he begins to thrust in and out with increasing speed.

oh, he is obscene now. obscene and still marked by the angels, somehow, as he translates your moans and kisses your eyelids and tells you how you’re so good for letting him fuck you like this, so pretty laid out for him, his very own _sìobhrag_ —

and then you are coming around him and clutching at his shoulder while giving voice to his name and before long he is following suit, slurring scots and english in your ear as you both descend.

obi-wan kisses you, softly, before padding away and rummaging for something nearby. he returns with a clean cloth, and a bottle of water, which he gives to you as he kneels as starts to clean the two of you up: first himself, briefly, and then focusing on you. when he has replaced your pants and buckled your shoes he breaks the silence.

“was it— was it too much?” he sounds like the broken glass from outside the bar, months earlier.

you hop down from the bench and pull him to his full height. “it was perfect, _cion-gràidh_ ” the lyricism is distorted, and the pronunciation off, but he does not mind. he kisses you, then, full and tender and suffused with thanks.

“No one’s ever called me Obi before,” he says, voice scratchy and familiar in your ear.

You nestle into his shoulder, pressing a kiss there before speaking. “Is that okay?”

He nods against your hair. “Please, _gràdh geal mo chridhe_.”

“Always, Obi.” Yes, you think, it will always be him. no matter what happens; you are inexplicably intertwined in his life and yours in his and so it has been, so it shall be.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! as always, i'm always available for a chat on tumblr :)


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